Grim Designs Grab UK Judges

Source from:  The Canberra Times  05/27/2013

THEY'RE hated by smokers, show graphic pictures of rotting limbs and diseased eyeballs and have been the subject of a High Court challenge. But Australia's controversial olive-green plain cigarette packages were shortlisted for a prestigious British design award.

A panel of judges at the Design Museum in London reviewed the Australian cigarette packaging in the graphics category of its annual awards, alongside magazines, posters and book covers from around the world.

The winner of the category was the UK-based John Morgan Studio, which designed posters, signage and publications for the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Pete Collard, curator of Designs of the Year at the museum, said the cigarette packaging was a purposely bad piece of design.

''The packaging is the result of market research that asked what colours were most unappealing to consumers,'' he said.

''Not everything displayed in the Design Museum should be beautiful or 'good', the point is to open a discussion about the way everyday objects are made, the messages they send out and how we react to them.''

Mandi Keighran, a London-based writer and editor specialising in design, nominated the packaging for the award, calling it a piece of ''anti-design''. She said cigarette companies had worked for decades to use design to create brand loyalty, including Frank Gianninoto's iconic red packaging for Marlboro.

But Australia's generic olive green-brown packs showcased graphic images of smoking-related illnesses and other health warnings, with cigarette brands printed in small writing at the bottom.

''The packaging and display, whilst unappealing, is design at its best - a tool for social change.''

A spokesman from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing said tobacco plain packaging aimed to lower smoking rates by reducing the appeal of cigarettes, reducing the ability of packaging to mislead consumers about the harms of smoking and by increasing the prominence of health warnings.

''No longer when an Australian smoker pulls out a packet of cigarettes will that packet be a mobile advertising billboard,'' the spokesman said. Enditem